The Cost of Loving

The cost of loving is finally realizing that the world doesn't revolve around you. A bittersweet realization that it doesn't matter what your day was like, how well you did on that test or how bad the traffic was. The cost of loving comes with the painfully surreal understanding that life is beautiful again, and that beauty is more than just skin deep. Fair and lovely, and dusky and dangerous.

The cost of loving is riveting, hair-raising, and disturbingly real. It is being stranded in the midst of a monsoon, with a fully dead phone, resisting the urge to bang your head on the window, trying hard, desperately hard, to remember who you scammed in your previous life, trying to imagine why they'd be taking their revenge in this manner. It is sitting in a parked car, and just watching the wondrous waterworld around you.  Frustrated but also utterly amazed at the chaos that surrounds you. Frustrated, but also in awe of the showerheads in the heavens, 

....like talk about spring cleaning:

the one in my bathroom most definitely isn't this deliberate

Fine, you got me you got me. I don't know what the cost of loving is, I don't know if it's losing sleep, or losing keys or losing the meager 1% left on your already well-abused Iphone. I don't know if its driving your friends up the wall with ill-timed FaceTime calls or ill-advised autocorrects. 

All I know is that today, I am a free woman. With my first and last final out of the way, I feel like a boss. Sure, my life isn't perfect, and it's cost me many long nights, delirious mornings, and miserable afternoons, but I think, I think I'm happy.

Sometimes the cost is worth the return. You'll go places, and it'll cost you more than you can imagine. But it'll be worth every drop of sweat, every sunburn, every headache. 

You'll leave home and find it and leave again. You'll go far, and near and then far again. But no matter where you go, you'll always return.

Home. Wherever that is.

And one day, one day you'll realize that the cost is worth the return.